[jboss-dev] Maven Complaints [Was: Broken builds]

[Rémy Maucherat]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Andrew Lee Rubinger
<andrew.rubinger at redhat.com> wrote:
> Rémy Maucherat wrote:
>   > Personally, I think Maven is an abomination. +1 to any proposal to get
>
> > rid of this piece of junk ASAP.
> >
> > Rémy
> >
>
>  Ultra constructive, bravo!

My pleasure :)

>  Upon what are you basing this opinion?  And what helpful solutions would
> you recommend to solve the issues giving you trouble?

I base my opinion on this after looking at what Maven is doing when
downloading dependencies, and how it apparently needs specific
configuration to consider downloading the right thing.

The solutions I recommend are consider non broken alternatives [I see
Ovidiu's showing up with something, for instance], or switching back
to thirdparty (it has flaws but is easier to manage).

>  We've outgrown the monolithic AS layout, and need to be adopting a
> componentized structure where each project pushes forth frequent releases
> for integration.

If this could stop, it would be nice. It has been going on for months :(

>  Most of the problems we've encountered can be chalked up to Maven's
> exposure of an improper build process that we've inflicted upon ourselves
> during the breakout of AS components.  Bringing cyclic dependencies to the
> forefront gives us a fail-fast that prevents release.
>
>  With the new mandate set to remove all snapshots from the AS
> component-matrix, we can expect to see reliably reproducible builds.
> Snapshots were just as horrid with the older Thirdparty setup.

No. Maven stores JARs in two places, I have found (its own, and
thirdparty). This causes management problems that did not exist
before. Also, errors in poms yield non existent error messages
(stacktrace with "invalid POM" without mention on what or where the
error was).

>  Maven is just a build tool, and it's not the offender here.  Until
> snapshots are gone and the new projects have a proper dependency chain,
> we'll be in the muck pointing fingers at one another.

I think the snashots are not at fault, it's simply the tool that is
completely inappropriate. Since you force fed me with this great tool,
I think I have to pass on my thanks for making my job harder, I
appreciate it :)

Rémy